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Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem

Uncanny, peculiar,
uncomfortably strange,
I tend my fires and tell my story…the story of
this quirky girl
overly-intelligent
and stuck in time
that is not time, so
unreconciled to time
so bound up in its realm.I am strapped there
on Your wrist (watch)
a condor in a cage
passing from quick present
to some furious future
and thus so fast becoming
dim, and dark, and past
and wondering if I amever? present?
ever a moment?
ever a significant occasion
or an immeasurable quality?

I want real time!time which breaks through
with a shock of joy
like a leap into Crater Lake
on a snowy New Year’s morning,
time where we are completely
un-self conscious and far more
real in some eternal nowI thirst for a moment jeweled!a moment
so sweet or magnified
it seems to stop time
but doesn’t because time
becomes a point so limply moot
and thus no longer dirty moat
between me and my true selfAnd here I sit, beside time’s bonfireand sparks fly up
and away so quick
to join the stars
and glimmer and
I poke at this fire
hot and tender
and tend it…
with my tinderand wonder how to be
here in this already
and not yet, between
That Eternal Now
and this one,
and the One
Who There Inhabits?wonder how to be aware
of life while I am living it?

wonder how to limp courageous
and relinquish all control
of self and self awareness?

wonder how to laugh courageous
and look for glory
in the storied
wonder of the ordinary?

wonder how to live courageous
and be surprised by One
who dares draw near?

wonder how to love courageous
and take off rings and watches?
I burn calendars and open
my heart uncanny,
strange peculiar…to see eternity in
the midst of time
to go to Bethlehem
today and everyday
in this time and place

where glimpses of the eternal
come quiet, unexpectedly
they come and they upset
our every notion static about time
and all we discover there within.
I open
my Uncanny Peculiar
Uncomfortably Strange Heart
to the story of All and Ever
ending Never

I choose
to live somewhere between
the already and not yet,
caught and held
by the One who
dwells within Outside.And so the fire burns away the moments
And we must choose our portion:
whether here we tarry or if
we choose to journey
Pregnant by some God

3 thoughts on “Advent Poem: To Go To Bethlehem”

How did this slip past me? I have read so many of your words. You know my struggle with poetry, my resistance- see I know I’m doing it, ‘Rissa! This one reached out and grabbed me. I think it’s time for me to create my own personal Charissa collection.

YESSS!!! And LOLOL too…Kat, sometimes as I go back and look at one year ago, and I don’t even recall writing a poem!

This one I remembered after reading thru and seeing “I want REAL time!” and the image of pushing the dominos over…

And omg whenever you comment and say that you are grabbed by my work it is a real macaroni in my cap cus you have indeed told me of your initial interactions with poetry and how reading here has begun to influence that. I am as always truly honored!